


Nightmares

by SerenLyall



Series: Burn the book that says you took the Autumn [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Self-Harm, bookshop au, elrond is a combat medic vet, he is extremely not okay, mentioned character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 20:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenLyall/pseuds/SerenLyall
Summary: In which Elrond reflects.Or: A character study of Elrond Peredhel, after he returns from overseas, but before he meets the young florist next door.





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> What am I doing starting a new project? I DON'T KNOW. This one is going to be a series of oneshots (or two-shots), though, that I can write in between other things, all connected to form one (hopefully) coherent story line. Is it going to be a soap opera? Maybe. A romance? Certainly! Basically, though, this series tells the story of Elrond Peredhel, a combat medic veteran, who returns from war and opens a bookshop. Sometime thereafter, a lovely young woman named Celebrian (who is an interior designer) opens a florist's beside his bookshop. The two meet and the rest is, as they say, history. The title of the series is taken from the Metric song "The Art of Doubt".
> 
> Anyway, this series will range from dark to light, fluffy to angsty, romance to gen! I hope you all enjoy - and I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

Nightmares

Elrond wakes from his nightmare with a start and a jolt. He sits upright in his small, cot-like bed, breathing heavily, sweat dampening his shirt and sticking it to his back. He shivers in the chill of the night air flowing in through the open window above his bed, then swings his legs over the edge and to the floor. The wooden floorboards are a welcome shock of chill against his bare skin, and he stands and walks unsteadily towards the bathroom.

The bathroom is small and cracked, with a toilet and sink crammed together in front of the small, mildewed bathtub. A lace shower curtain cover hangs in front of the plastic, woven in an array of waterfalls and cliffs. When Elrond had seen the image on the box in the store, he had fallen instantly in love, a strange feeling of peace washing over him. He had bought it on a whim—a luxury buy, for all that it had only been $8—and now, whenever he stripped to step into the shower, it felt as if the waterfalls were playing against his skin, smoothing away the memories and the scars.

Now he stares at it in the harsh light of the fluorescents mounted above the mirror hanging over the sink, and finds it is not bringing him the sense of peace it usually does. The taste of his nightmare is still too strong in his mouth and in his mind, full of blood and the smell of offal and the sound of the dying. He remembers the screams, and the sounds of bones crunching and skin tearing, and the concussive _thump, thump, thud!_ of the bombs exploding near and nearer still, the _rat-a-tat-tat_ of the machineguns firing, the _spit spit spat_ of the MP-40’s tearing down chunks of stone walls and chunks of flesh.

He makes it to the toilet before he vomits, the bile thin and sour against his tongue and in his throat as it burns—as it burns just as sharp and vile as the memories clawing their way to the surface of his mind.

Once he is done, he stands and makes his unsteady way to the sink. He turns on the tap, then rinses his mouth with the tepid water, drinks a few handfuls, and then straightens.

He is tall, with broad shoulders and long, dark hair that he often keeps up and out of his face in a standard military bun—though sometimes, when he is feeling daring and rebellious, he will put it in a ponytail. His eyes are grey—or so everyone else says, though he claims they are blue unless seen in the right light—and two long, white scars track across his cheek to his chin, cutting through his mouth and reaching for his ear.

He fingers these scars now, staring at them in the cracked mirror. They still pain him, sometimes—phantom pain and real pain in turn, reminding him constantly of the serrated knife; of the hands on his head, holding him down; of the laughter…

Elrond blinks and comes back to himself. He is breathing hard, his heart racing, and he is shivering. _Breathe_ , he tells himself sternly. _In, two, three, four—out, two, three, four, five, six, seven…_

Again. And again. And again he forces himself to count as he breathes, hands braced against the sink counter, the ceramic of the surface cold against his palms, hard beneath his fingers. It is real, real, real—more real than the phantom hands, and the phantom blades, the phantom gunfire, the phantom buildings falling, the phantom screams, the phantom pain— _No_ , he thinks, and stops the thoughts in their tracks. _No, that is_ enough.

He straightens. Stares at himself in the mirror. He is pale and gaunt, with dark shadows under his eyes.

Elrond turns away.

He leaves the bathroom, flicking off the light, and then makes his blind way across his small bedroom to the hall that connects it to the living room and the kitchen. There he turns on the lights—warm, yellow things, compared to the harsh white light of his bathroom—and takes in the small room. The kitchen sports a gas stove and oven, a sink to the right of it, a table on which sits a microwave and coffeemaker, and precisely two counters—one on each side of the stove. A refrigerator is shoved into one corner, short and squat and old white; the door, when it opens, hits the nearest of the two table chairs.

Elrond opens the fridge and roots around for a moment before he finds the milk. He had stashed it in the door the night before, after making his oatmeal, and had forgotten where he put it; he had just gone grocery shopping the day before, and so his refrigerator is more full than usual, forcing him to put things in strange places.

He puts the milk on the table, then fetches a mug down from the cabinet. It is red, and painted with an eight-pointed star on the front; it has a chip in the lip, as well as in the handle—but it is Elrond’s favorite mug. It had been a gift from his brother long ago.

Sighing, Elrond also dug the cocoa mix out of the next cupboard over and, opening the lid and fetching a spoon, dumped a large helping into the mug. He added milk, then stuck the mug in the microwave for two minutes.

The two minutes he had to wait were excruciating. He stood with arms crossed, one bare foot tapping the linoleum tile painted with flowers and vines, mind consumed with counting down the seconds. _Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…_

Once the cocoa was done, and he had the hot mug in his hands, he walked into the sitting room and sat down on his old, threadbare couch. He had had this one piece of furniture since before he had gone off to war, and it shows, in the garish flowers painted on its cushions and back, and in the way the pillows sag in the middle. All the same, he is fond of it.

 _You’re a sentimental fool_ , he tells himself, but without much ire.

He flips on the TV as he sips his cocoa. He channel surfs for a few moments, before at last settling on a rerun of a _Phineas and Ferb_ episode on Disney. Cartoons, he has found, help him the most after an Episode. They are absent of any realistic reminders of what he went through—are devoid of the skin he had cut into, of the veins he had slit and pieced back together, of the faces he had reconstructed and failed to reconstruct.

 _Failure_.

The voice is familiar and comfortable, like an old, worn jacket draping over his shoulders. It settles over his soul now, warm and hot and searing, and he leans into it, welcoming it with a lover’s embrace.

 _You’re a fucking failure_ , the voice says _. How many did you lose over there? How many couldn’t you save? How many were you unable to even help?_

Slowly, carefully, one-by-one, Elrond goes over the names in his head.

_Glorfindel._

_Edlennglamor. Heleggur. Limorod. Rínthalion. Tologpan._

_Elros._

On and on the names go, until Elrond cannot even hear or see the episode of _Phineas and Ferb._ Instead all he sees are the dead and dying faces of those he lost—the last thing he saw of each person who died under his hands: eyes glassed over, mouths open and often dried with blood, bruises darkening flesh to sunset purple and sunrise red. Or else he sees the blank, empty spaces where those he did not see die exist, eternally lost to a void of empty desperation and futile hope.

He blinks, and comes back to himself. His cocoa is cold in the pewter mug, and he is trembling.

 _How dare you be alive when they are dead?_ the voice whispers in his mind. _How dare you be whole and hale when they are broken and gone?_

He rises, placing the mug of barely-sipped cocoa on the coffee table, and turns to go back to his room. Once there, he shuts the door, cutting off the light from the kitchen and casting the room in almost complete shadow, and pulls off his sweatpants, leaving him only in his boxers. Then he crosses to the dresser, opens it, and draws out the long-handled knife he keeps buried at the depths of his folded clothes.

He once had killed a man with this knife. Now, however, he only uses it to kill himself.

Ten minutes later, he is done. His left calf is a bloody mess of cuts down to the bone, of criss-crossing lacerations that weep scarlet tears. He drops the bloodied blade to the hardwood floors, and stares down at his handiwork.

 _Now I am not so whole,_ he thinks.

 _Now you have something to put back together,_ the voice adds.

Elrond stands and hobbles his way over to the dresser once more, leaving a trail of blood that gleams black in the low light with each left footstep. He pulls open the top drawer again, only this time he pulls out his healer’s satchel, which he keeps tucked there, in the back.

He sits down on the floor, takes out an alcohol swab, and swipes the cuts clean—or as clean as he can with the blood running red and hot down his leg. Then the takes out a needle, threads it with surgical thread, and begins to stitch the worst of the seventeen lacerations on his leg.

His trembling has graduated to shaking by the time he is done. He stands, though, and goes to wash his hands in the sink. The water runs red and then pink, the soap lathering scarlet and rose before he washes his hands beneath the lukewarm water. Then he limps out to the hallway, finds a towel, and begins the long process of wiping up the blood from the floor.

Once he is done, he climbs into bed. The room is still almost dark, the only light coming from the moon and the streetlamp burning in the parking lot outside of his apartment window. He lies there for a long time before drifting off to sleep, pain throbbing in his leg like an old, welcome friend, and thoughts spiraling through his mind.

 _You’re weak_ , they say. And, _You are doomed._

 _Doomed to what?_ he asks the thoughts, the voices, the whispers.

_Doomed to lonely, loveless life where all that you touch burns._

He falls asleep with the refrain of that thought echoing in his mind.


End file.
